County officials perform in drama about Klan trial

Posted: Friday, September 17, 1999

The Associated Press

GEORGETOWN (AP) - Although 76 years have passed since Texas prosecutor Dan Moody stood up to the Ku Klux Klan, the story is being told again in the same building where the dramatic 1923 trial took place.

The play "You Can't Do That, Dan Moody!" that was opening Thursday in the Williamson County Courthouse is based on a book by the county's current district attorney, Ken Anderson.

The show features some local officials. District Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield portrays the judge and Assistant County Attorney Dan M. Gattis plays Moody, then district attorney of Williamson and Travis counties.

The Palace Theatre Guild's production, which sold out every performance last year, follows the trial of four Klansmen accused of kidnapping a traveling salesman, flogging him, chaining him to a fence post and covering him with tar on Easter Sunday.

The salesman's crime? Living in a Weir boardinghouse operated by a young widow.

"It was the O.J. Simpson trial of 1923," Anderson said. "Every seat was taken, people brought their lunch into the courtroom, and the rotunda was filled."

Both the salesman and widow were white, Anderson said. The Klan violence was directed at the perception of moral wrongdoing, he said.

The trial ended in the first conviction against the Klan in America at a time when the group's power had peaked. In the 1920s, Klan membership had swelled to 5 million nationwide, and chapters had sprung up all over Texas.

Anderson says the trial turned the political tide against the Klan in Texas. Moody went on to become state attorney general and governor.

Little has changed in the courtroom since the first trial.

When the jury foreman reads the verdict at the end of the play, he stands in the same spot and looks at a defendant sitting at the same table where the events originally occurred.

"We get the heebie jeebies sometimes. The hair just goes up. Dan Moody becomes a real guy, and what they did as real people is quite humbling," said artistic director Tom Swift.